What Are Millennial Foodies Eating?

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Millennials are into food — big-time. Nearly half — 46 percent — of Americans ages 25 to 33 consider themselves “foodies,” as do 42 percent of those ages 13 to 33, according to a new survey by youth marketing and millennial research firm Ypulse. And no, the recession really didn’t do much to quell these young people’s hunger for new and different food experiences.

“To get through the financial crises, young consumers opted to spend on experiences instead of expensive material goods like houses or cars,” Ypulse asserted. “As a result, food has become a new status symbol and a form of social currency.”

But what foods are the young men and women of the millennial generation gobbling up? The Washington Post recently pulled together a few revealing charts based on the Ypulse survey results. Here are four interesting takeaways:

1: Top food trends among millennials, in terms of how many respondents said they had tried them, include “sweet and spicy” foods (40 percent have tried), quinoa (36 percent), meals in bowls (35 percent), craft beer (26 percent), artisan ice cream (24 percent), cold-brew coffee (20 percent) and farm-to-table eating (18 percent). Just 18 percent of millennials said they had tried none of these.

2: Some trends — mostly those involving beer — were much more common in millennial men than in millennial women, the Post notes: While 30 percent of male millennials had tried craft beer, only 21 percent of female millennials had. Similarly, 16 percent of young men had tried a beer bar and 13 percent of them had sampled beer pairings, whereas only 8 percent and 7 percent of women had tried those things, respectively.

3: Other trends were more common in millennial women than men. Among them were quinoa (43 percent of women had tried it; only 28 percent of men had), meals in bowls (40 percent vs. 31 percent), “spiralized” veggies (14 percent vs. 7 percent), and foods that were “sweet and spicy”(43 percent vs. 36 percent).

4: Manifestations of foodie-ism also vary by region: While 19 percent of millennials on the West Coast and 17 percent of those in the Northeast had tried “artisan” foods, 14 percent of those in the Midwest and just 11 percent of those in the South had. Then again, the Post observes, “Just because young people in [the South] don’t inhale quinoa or cold-brew coffee, it doesn’t mean they’re not inventive or adventurous. After all, Southerners were eating kale long before Gwyneth Paltrow.” Good point.